Year: 2024
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The diverticulum of Meckel
Johann Friedrich Meckel the Younger, a German anatomist, identified and described Meckel’s diverticulum in 1809, building on earlier observations by Fabricius Hildanus in the sixteenth century. The diverticulum is the most common congenital abnormality of the gastrointestinal tract, found in about 2% of the population. It is a pouch or bulge in the small intestine…
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Francis Glisson and his capsule
Francis Glisson (1597–1677) was a highly successful physician, so famous in London that in 1668 he was consulted along with Ashley Cooper and Thomas Sydenham to advise whether the future Earl of Shaftesbury should undergo surgery to drain a perihepatic abscess. In 1650, he published a comprehensive account of infantile rickets (“Glisson’s disease”). Four years…
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A gastrointestinal quartet
These four individuals, despite their promising, euphonious names, did not write great operas. They were mere anatomists and worked on the area where the pancreas and gallbladder ducts meet to enter the duodenum. The most senior of the group was the German Johann Georg Wirsung (1589–1643). While working in Padua in 1642 and dissecting an…
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Medical teaching from ancient civilizations to the nineteenth century
Patrick FiddesAustralia The perception that medicine’s contemporary teaching practices were introduced by innovative Modern Era1 physicians does not recognize the original contributions of ancient forefathers. Medicine’s earliest teaching records exist in ancient Sanskrit. They provide “detailed information concerning the training of doctors”2 in Akkadian where “the master’s interpretation of texts were preserved as [an] oral…
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Sir Peter Medawar and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance
At Oxford during World War II, Peter Medawar and his colleagues made the remarkable observation that patients pre-treated in early life with embryotic cells did not reject skin grafts from unrelated donors. This gave rise to the concept of acquired immunological tolerance and revolutionized the field of organ transplantation as well as changed our understanding…
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Notes made after a medical meeting in Rhodes a long time ago
It is time to relax between presentations, away from medical crowds, from lectures and posters, from science, medical education, and eager pharmaceutical representatives. It is also a respite from sleet and snow, and there is no need to wear a coat, for the sun shines almost all day. This is also an opportunity to learn…
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The locked-in syndrome in fiction
JMS PearceHull, England The soul is trapped in a body that no longer obeys its commands.—A. Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, 1844 The pediatric neurologist Richard E. Nordgren and colleagues in 1971 described seven cases of what they called “The Locked In Syndrome.”1 Plum and Posner’s classic monograph comprehensively reviewed the condition and distinguished…
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Medical education and family caregiving in immigrant populations
Mahnoor AyubDetroit, Michigan, United States According to the Kaiser Family Foundation,1 1 in 4 children in the US has an immigrant parent. South Asian (SA) countries are one of the main sources of international migration.2 The SA immigrant population in the US is heterogeneous and includes people from countries such as Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan,…
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Alexander von Humboldt, famous scientist and humanist
Born in 1769 into an aristocratic family in Berlin, Alexander von Humboldt was one of the most influential scientists and explorers of the nineteenth century, renowned for his work in geography, natural history, meteorology, and ecology. After first studying at the Universities of Frankfurt on the Oder and at Göttingen, he intended to pursue a…
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Charles Dickens and his doctors
Charles Dickens, one the greatest authors in the English language, featured in his novels medical doctors, students, and related professionals. They do not play an important role in his plots, but are interesting because they exemplify how medical practice was conducted two hundred years ago. Some of his doctors were benevolent and generous, others incompetent,…